Month: March 2012

The Texas Civil Rights Review is proud to present the writings of Ramsey Muniz from federal prison.

This morning I walked for one and half hours and I would stop every 50 yards to pray for a member of the family until I prayed for everyone. Thereafter, I began to communicate directly with the Lord and I did so until it was time for me to return inside.

As you witness on television, there is a great movement coming on once again. All of the old timers are coming back out very strong including the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the Reverend Ralph Abrernathy, and various music and sports superstars. They speak not only of Trayvon Martin, the innocent young man whose life was taken. They cry out that enough is enough and that the time has come for the people to reunite like never ever before. Everyone of them makes the statement that is all about suffering and that the African Americans have suffered enough!

When i hear them speak, my heart and soul begin to pound, because I am a victim of this suffering, and it was not just yesterday or the day before that I suffering drastically. I have cried out about my suffering for the last 20 years of my life! I challenge someone to show me another one who has suffered in the manner that I have suffered and continue to suffer to this very day.

Hispanics and Latinos – individuals and leaders, do not have to answer to me about my suffering. They can refuse to take a positive position regarding my freedom. God will wait for them in His court andHe will remind them that I was hungry, sick, cold and asking for help.

Yes, the time has come — enough is enough! Even President Obama is concerned about the way that his race has been treated for the last ten years, and if some doubt his words of wisdom I challenge them to enter the prisons and witness the oppression, repression, and racism like never ever before.

It is time to unite and come forth, because in reality no one has the political and cultural power that we should have by now. We are holding ourselves back at a critical time in which we need to leap forward. It is time to wake up from the nightmare that we have experienced for years. It is time to rise and come forth to seek not only my freedom, but freedom for all humanity!

Amor,
Tez

[Ramsey Muniz
from Federal Prison]

www.freeramsey.com

Dear Friends,

Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund is please to announce that it sponsored a big party for the children in Alfaraa refugee camp in Palestine to celebrate Children’s Day and the Disabled Children Day. The event included clowns, music and the distribution of toys and gifts to the children which can be seen in these links, here and here.

PCWF is also planning to distribute for the upcoming Eid El Adha almubarak sheep, chickens, toys and gifts to the children in Alfaraa refugee camp, the Hebron Orphans House, the city of Beitlehem and other cities in Palestine where we work. Please consider supporting our work by buying Palestinian arts and crafts whose proceeds go back to the men and women in Palestine who produce the goods so that they can live with their pride and dignity.

Furthermore, it will support the Palestinian economy and create jobs for the men and women to feed their families. Donations can be made on our website http://www.pcwf.org and all donations will be listed on the website to recognize the donors and maintain the integrity of our work for the sake of the children.

Looking forward to hearing from you and thanks again for your generosity, work and support for the children of Palestine.

Salamat
Riad Elsolh Hamad
Austin, TX

LETTER: U.S. government’s apathy presents largest hurdle in fight against man’s deportation

By LOUIE GOHMERT
U.S. representative

Lufkin Daily News
Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The situation with Rrustem Neza has been both intolerable and frustrating for more than eight months now as we have fought to assist him with our own unfeeling and, thus far, unyielding government. Our own federal laws regarding privacy have prevented me from coming forward with our efforts thus far, but Rrustem’s family has encouraged me to respond and has approved this statement so that we do not say anything inappropriate.

Nonetheless, for me to be aware of the vast failures of the Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in their widespread allowance of illegal immigration only to have them remain relentless in the Nezas’ case has only added to the frustration. The Executive Branch through the Department of Homeland Security, CIS, and ICE has authority to take the actions they are taking, but they should not have the right. Through our efforts on Rrustem’s behalf, the best we got from CIS was that they would continue to consider our admonitions and pleas on the family’s behalf and that IF there were to be a deportation, they would certainly let me know ahead of time. Imagine my absolute anger when we had to read about the outrageous attempt to deport Rrustem unsuccessfully, and they now want to sedate him in order to send him to what may well be his death.

As most people know, I am a strong believer in following the laws regarding Immigration. However, we have laws to allow people to remain here based on asylum and the need to protect their lives. Yes, as the CIS keeps pointing out, Rrustem apparently came in on an Italian passport which was not appropriate. However, when people came by subterfuge from Communist Cold War countries, we did not condemn them and send them back. We accepted them in a humanitarian spirit to save their lives. Rrustem was also not aware that the attorney they had hired had listed that he was a citizen in the application for a liquor license for their restaurant, but that is the other issue that CIS, ICE, and Homeland Security keep hurling back at us.

My office and I have and will continue to personally work with Xhemal Neza, Rrustem Neza’s brother, to attempt to stop this travesty of justice. We are told that if we can find an alternative country that will take him, our government will attempt to accommodate that request. However, they have more ability to help find such a country than anyone else and yet they have not been helpful in that effort so far.

When I found out about the effort to get an order for sedation, I immediately sent letters in the nature of Amicus Curiae submissions to U.S. District Judge Sam Cummings who presides over the effort of our Executive Branch to have Mr. Neza sedated while being sent back. I personally approached Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice face to face and have attempted to contact Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff who has had an assistant contacting me instead. So far, those efforts have not been fruitful, but the deportation order needs to be changed.

I have notified them more recently that if Rrustem is returned to Albania to meet his untimely death, as a Congressman I will not stop the hounding of those in our own government until they are out by using the actual names of those bureaucrats complicitous in his murder by their apathy and callousness. This would not be out of revenge, but out of my fervent desire for better people in our United States government. Hopefully, the thought of being held to ridicule indefinitely will give the bureaucrats cause for pause that the possible murder of Mr. Neza, unfortunately, has not.

Email from John Wheat Gibson: “Government refuses to allow Neza to present case to immigration judge, and refuses to allow him to go somewhere besides Albania. Attached is the . . . letter of the government refusing to allow him to present his asylum case to an immigration judge.”

Sign Away Your Rights to Protest says US Attorney to Albanian Refugee in Nov. 30 Letter

Editor’s Note: Read the US Government’s latest rebuff to Albanian refugee Rrustem Neza (in pdf format), instructing him to restrain himself and not resist a deportation that would place him in fear for his life.

The US Attorney for the Northern District of Texas notes that Mr. Neza’s appeals to immigration authorities and to US courts have all come to nothing: “There is no reason, therefore, to accept your premise that Mr. Neza will be harmed if he is removed to Albania, either on the basis of his original asylum claim or his new assertion based on the self-generated publicity of his case.”

The US Attorney does not give his own reasons why he discounts evidence of other killings in this case.

But the US Attorney does parry with a counteroffer: “Therefore, in the spirit of reaching an amicable resolution in this case, the United States is willing to dismiss the current civil action, without prejudice, conditioned on Mr. Neza’s written agreement to cease and desist in his efforts to prevent or hamper his removal by physical resistance or other disruptive conduct intended or designed to achieve that result. In that event, there would be no need to seek the aid of the district court to enforce his removal.”

To our nonlawerly ears this sounds like a US Attorney using the power of office to mock the fears of a refugee. But we’re checking with attorney Gibson to see if there’s some hope we’re not finding.–gm

PS: We asked Gibson about the “last paragraph” in the Nov. 30 letter from Assistant US Attorney E. Scott Frost. Here’s how Gibson replied:

Frost’s last paragraph, “I look forward to your response in the near future,” seems to refer to the previous two, in which Frost offers not to
obtain an order to drug Rrustem if Rrustem will agree in writing to be deported to Albania without making a ruckus.

Frost is offering to let Rrustem get off the plane sufficiently alert to run from the killers so he will be shot in the back, rather than so drugged that
the killers can blow him away without his waking up. This is the generosity of the Chertoff-Mukasey regime.

John Wheat Gibson